State-level guest-worker programs
An interesting policy proposal described by the Economist: Mr Shurtleff proposes an arrangement between Utah and individual Mexican states such as Nuevo Leon, in the north-east. Employers in Utah could...
View ArticleWage convergence
FT: “Call centre workers are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company.” [HT: Tepper]
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Development interventions
E.R. Tufte probably wouldn’t like this graph, but it conveys a simple message about development interventions: See David McKenzie’s World Bank blog post and VoxEU column for the story. [HT: Blattman]
View ArticleBest practice in labor mobility
The World Bank’s Manjula Luthria on labor mobility for the poor (pdf): The Pacific Islands and New Zealand program, known as the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme has been described by the...
View ArticleThe return to migrant experience
Studying Mexican laborers, Steffen Reinhold and Kevin Thom estimate a substantial return to US work experience, possibly as large as the return to Mexican education. There is a growing literature...
View ArticleQuick reads
Pascal Lamy announces plans to seek an early harvest at the December WTO ministerial meeting on LDC issues like duty-free, quota-free market access and rules of origin. They’ll push tougher issues off...
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Growing visa costs for Indian IT firms
Mint reports that Indian IT companies are classifying workers servicing US clients as traveling for “knowledge transfer” in order to the circumvent the increased costs of H-1B and L-1 visas: A report...
View ArticleOne way to increase access to the US labor market
Tim Lee, writing for Ars Technica, describes a Silicon Valley startup aiming to facilitate the creation of more Silicon Valley startups by improving labor mobility: Blueseed plans to buy a ship and...
View ArticleCross-country wage comparisons
On Saturday, I listened to Orley Ashenfelter’s AEA presidential address about cross-country wage comparisons. For a few years, Ashenfelter has been collecting data on “McWages“, so as to “to measure...
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Who is working at home during the pandemic?
In late March, Brent Neiman and I posted a paper addressing a straightforward and suddenly pressing question: How Many Jobs Can be Done at Home? Our aim was to describe what is feasible. Looking at...
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